Amazon.com is planning to open hundreds of brick-and-mortar bookstores, the head of a major US mall operator said. Such an expansion, which Amazon itself has not confirmed, would position the world’s top online retailer as a competitor to booksellers such as Barnes & Noble. At present, Amazon operates a single bookstore in its home city, Seattle.

“You’ve got Amazon opening brick-and-mortar bookstores and their goal is to open, as I understand, 300 to 400 bookstores,” Sandeep Mathrani, chief executive of General Growth Properties, said on Tuesday. He was responding to a question about mall traffic during a conference call with analysts, a day after the second-biggest US mall operator reported quarterly earnings.